3 Essentials to Targeting and Prospecting B2B Leads Effectively

Think you’re targeting the right audience? There’s always room to increase traction with leads. Here’s a quick guide to target and prospect leads effectively to engage, convert and commit them to buy:

Targeting B2B Leads Effectively

1. Develop Precise Buyer Personas

Before you dive into sales prospecting, you need to identify your target audiences that are most likely to engage, interact and buy, and determine how you can best motivate a purchase decision. Audiences that are too broad may be larger in number, but not value. By identifying precise buyer personas, you can easily narrow your search and target qualified leads. You can develop targeted messaging strategies around different buyer personas by identifying the following:

Pain

What pain is your buyer suffering? Or conversely, what solution do you provide your buyer to resolve their pain? No pain, no sale.

Goal

What is their goal and how does it align with your product’s solution? Your target buyers will be motivated to buy into your solution to achieve a goal.

Role

What role does your buyer play on a personal and professional level? Are they a decision maker or influencer that can either choose to purchase your product or influence a purchase decision?

Research

How do they gather information on a product or service? Before making a purchase, what do they need to see from you to commit and what sources do they trust most?

2. Balance Inbound and Outbound Strategies

Inbound marketing is a highly effective solution to drive qualified B2B leads for your business, but it is a major time commitment. It can take up to six months for you to generate leads using inbound strategy alone. You’ll need to invest significant creative energy and time to see results from inbound, publishing original content on a consistent basis to drive web traffic, convert visits to leads, and nurture leads into opportunities. Your best bet is to split your time between inbound and outbound prospecting efforts, using targeted email lists for sales prospecting to drive immediate engagement.

Buying B2B leads online has both immediate and long-term benefits on engagement. So long as you’re investing in highly targeted lead lists, you will be able to leverage those contacts to test different messaging strategies and campaigns. But make sure to purchase your B2B leads. You don’t want to rent lead lists for a couple reasons: First being that you’re limited in the amount of times you’re able to use rented lists, and second being that you run the risk of renting data that is oversaturated with contacts that have been spammed to death. You’re better off buying targeted B2B leads for sales prospecting from a qualified data provider. Using targeted data is a great way to find out what resonates with your audience. When organic leads start to come in through inbound, you will have a better sense of what messaging strategies and assets to use to get leads to convert.

Prospecting B2B Leads Effectively

3. Play to the pain

In order to prospect effectively, you need to refine your messaging strategy based on the pain your leads encounter in their roles. What distinct challenges do your individual audiences face on a regular basis, and how does your product serve as a solution to their pain? Be sure to personalize your messaging, otherwise you’re just the next sales guy on repeat in their inbox (who eventually gets moved to spam). Personalize messaging using this template to play to their pain:

Present their challenge

Start with the most obvious, consistent pain that will be most enticing and more likely lead to engagement sooner

Present a solution

Nurture with educational content that supports your product, or quite simply tell them how your product serves as a solution to their pain

Demand action

Create a call to action like “learn more”, “subscribe” or “buy now”

Purchasing targeted B2B leads is a great way to continue your outbound prospecting efforts while simultaneously enabling you to test new messaging and campaign strategies to support your inbound marketing efforts for sales prospecting.

Effective lead prospecting starts at the top. In order to funnel in qualified B2B leads that are ready to buy, you have to cater your messaging to address their challenges. As you’re working to fill the top of the funnel with qualified leads organically, you can balance your inbound efforts with outbound sales prospecting. Choosing to purchase qualified B2B leads from a reputable data provider will enable you to drive immediate traffic (and revenue) for your business. You can start by building a custom sample list of B2B leads (free) to test lead qualifications prior to purchasing a full list. Request a sample below to get started.